Business jets

[Blackpuddin]

In a previous life I used to fly around the UK with the boss of a big national company, his was a Citation, not sure what model but from memory it had six seats, I just remember how 'together' it felt compared to a regular airliner, just tight and very reassuring somehow, not flexy.

[Sifly]

sanf said:

Sifly said:

After 30 years in the RAF flying Vulcans and then Buccaneers my step dad moved into flying civvie stuff. The Dash 8 followed by the 145. He found them all a bit dull!! But actually preferred the Dash 8 to the 145.

Yep I agree, I flew the Dash-8 before the 145 (probably for the same company) and the Dash was a fantastic aircraft. The short field performance was staggering and you could land it in a 35kt cross wind with precision! The 145 had some great kit up front but had you on the edge of your seat in anything other than a calm clear day.

[Eric Mc]

How does the 145 compare with the Bombardier RJ family?

[CelicaGT]

Sifly said:

The Brasilia is a small twin turbo prop, not a jet.
Heres the EMB Legacy Private Jet




Heres the civil (streched) version the EMB 145 which I had the pleasure of flying



For the record, I thought the 145 handled like a pig. Good fun empty in the circuit but not a comfortable cruiser. It wasn't the easiest thing to handle in gusty cross winds either

Edited by Sifly on Sunday 19th February 23:22

I am aware that the Brasilia is a t-prop. Take a look at the nose of the EMB-145 and the EMB-120. Notice any resemblance? Ever wonder why it's so damn loud in the cockpit of an EMB-145? Just maybe it's because they took a t-prop and made it into a jet. The airline I work for used to be a leading operator of the Brasilia so believe me I know it's a t-prop and not a jet. And also, the Legacy didn't make it's first flight until 2001! That makes it kind of hard for the EMB-145 to be a development of the Legacy, since it's first flight was in 1995. The Legacy is actually a shortened version of the 145, just like the 135 is a shortened version which came out after the 145.

Since I don't want to quote wikipedia I'll quote airliners.net:
"Embraer began working on 50 seat regional jet concepts in the late 1980s. The original EMB-145 (the marketing designation later became ERJ-145) was launched in mid 1989 and would have been a stretched and jet engined EMB-120 Brasilia. Features of this design included a straight wing with winglets and the two turbofans mounted forward of the wing as on most low wing turboprops. This design would have seated 45 to 50 passengers and featured 75% commonality with the Brasilia. In that configuration cruising speed would have been 740km/h (400kt) and range with a 4500kg (9920lb) payload 2500km (1350nm).


But by 1990 Embraer was studying a modified design with less commonality to the Brasilia as wind tunnel testing revealed that the original configuration would not reach its design performance objectives. Changes to this interim design included a mildly swept wing with winglets (wing sweep of 22.3°) and conventional below wing mounted engines. Wind tunnel testing proved that this configuration met design objectives however it had a major drawback in that it would have needed an unusually high undercarriage.

Thus in late 1991 Embraer froze the ERJ-145 design with rear fuselage mounted engines and T-tail, and no winglets."

[Shar2]

Tango13 said:

telecat said:

The Lear Jet was once a Small fighter designed for the Swiss to fly so I'd say you could have fun in that. The Rest not sure about. Just checked and discovered that most of the Hawker 800 series is still made in the UK!!!

You're thinking of the P-16. Bill Lear was resident in Switzerland at the time and he liked the look of the P-16, nobody else did as they had a habit of crashing. He took the wings and tailplane from the P-16 and bolted them to a new fuselage to create the Lear Jet.

Bill Lear once upset the USAF once when he noticed a couple of fighters closing to investigate his aircraft, he activated the auto pilot, sat his 3yo son in the pilots seat and hid in the back out of sight.

Only the wings were used from the fighter, and these were originally designed by Kurt Tank for FW-190/Ta-152 fame. They proved too unstable for normal use which is why several other wing designs were used instead. The Learjet 25 I look after has Series II wings.

[sanf]

Sifly said:

sanf said:

Sifly said:

After 30 years in the RAF flying Vulcans and then Buccaneers my step dad moved into flying civvie stuff. The Dash 8 followed by the 145. He found them all a bit dull!! But actually preferred the Dash 8 to the 145.

Yep I agree, I flew the Dash-8 before the 145 (probably for the same company) and the Dash was a fantastic aircraft. The short field performance was staggering and you could land it in a 35kt cross wind with precision! The 145 had some great kit up front but had you on the edge of your seat in anything other than a calm clear day.

He joined what was Brymon in about 97 flying the Dash out of Bristol before switching to the 145 and flying from Birmingham from around 2000, I believe he was a training captain to.

[High flier]

I fly the Citation Bravo at the moment, and soon to be XLS or Hawker 125 rated. They're far more entertaining to fly than an airliner, especially as you can do high performance take offs when you've got no one in the back (our average flight is 3 sectors with just 1 having passengers on board), great fun climbing at 4000ft/min or even more if we're light . I know a few guys who used to fly airliners and moved to bizjets and wish they'd never bothered working for the airlines! There are however people who have tried both and prefer the airlines, although I've never come across one of them!

They're far more responsive and the power to weight ratio is very much in our favour, all in all great fun. Think of bizjets as big engined sports cars compared to the airliner buses

But they're by no means primitive as someone else has already stated. Unless of course you fly older examples but the airliners of the same era are just as low tech when compared with todays stuff!

Edited by High flier on Monday 20th February 14:44

[High flier]

CelicaGT said:

Well yeah, I meant something more along the lines of a Citation-I which cruises at about .70 Mach.

Blimey that'd be a high performance Citation I!! The Bravo's red line on the speed tape comes in at .70 Mach. The I probably does about 20mph . My dad is a TRE on 500/550 series Citations and says the I is a woefully underpowered thing. He hates having to do tests on people in it and he doesn't even have to touch the controls! It can barely get off the ground haha!

[ZeeTacoe]

Sifly said:

BrabusMog said:

I fly around central America a fair bit (as a pax) and I like the comfort of the Embraer's but I don't like landing in them. They feel flimsy and the last time we approached Managua I was convinced we were about to crash but credit to the pilot - I'm still alive

They ARE flimsy!

Next time your a passenger in one, sit on the back row.
During the take off role, set your eye level in line with the top of all the seats ahead of you.
As the aircraft rotates, watch as the seats at the front raise up out of line due to fuselage flex, it's most amusing (so long as your not a bad flyer)!!

How does that work? Wouldn't the fuselage bend around the wings meaning the front would go down and the back goes up?

[BrabusMog]

ZeeTacoe said:

Sifly said:

BrabusMog said:

I fly around central America a fair bit (as a pax) and I like the comfort of the Embraer's but I don't like landing in them. They feel flimsy and the last time we approached Managua I was convinced we were about to crash but credit to the pilot - I'm still alive

They ARE flimsy!

Next time your a passenger in one, sit on the back row.
During the take off role, set your eye level in line with the top of all the seats ahead of you.
As the aircraft rotates, watch as the seats at the front raise up out of line due to fuselage flex, it's most amusing (so long as your not a bad flyer)!!

How does that work? Wouldn't the fuselage bend around the wings meaning the front would go down and the back goes up?

Not sure but it can make for a terrifying landing!

[GrahamG]

This thread promnpted me to have a quick google browse and I found this gem on the Learjet Wikipedia page

"A Learjet held the previous speed record for the journey from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. at 4 hrs 12 mins, which was succeeded by the Lockheed SR-71 at 64 mins."

There's quick - And then there's FAST!!!

[Crafty_]

Chuck328 said:

Airline flying is as boring as it gets. One thing not mentioned as yet is good old big brother... FLIDRAS (Flight Data Replay and Analysis System). It means pretty much all flight parameters are monitored and automatically sent to HQ after each landing, anyone seen to be behaving like a cowboy will be pulled up for it and quite possibly P45'd. It lowers the insurance premiums and keeps the cowboys at bay.

It also means you can't really have some fun (there was a time I used to be able to take pax on a more 'scenic' tour towards landing, they loved it, we loved it but cost the company a few more quid in fuel (my employer at the time actually didn't mind the odd excursion as the feed back we got was always good)). These days I wouldn't dare for fear of...yep P45'd from my present employer.

I'm not sure what FLIDRAS is like in the bizjet world. Large operators like Netjets? I'll have to ask my mate on that. Smaller more private operators, do they have it?

The tech....oooo yeh, some clever stuff there in that bizjet world.

It's been around for a few years now but I always thought this was great idea.

http://www.gulfstream.com/product_enhancements/evs...

Add moving map taxiway - GPS - allied position in an electronic display to show you exactly where you are (have you tried navigating round Paris CDG or the likes in thick fog!) to the frame and I'm liking the bizjet world more and more.

Anyone want to swap, say a G550 for 320?

Not heard the term FILDRAS, we know it as FOQA (Flight Operations Quality Assurance).
As you say the data is downloaded upon landing, I think most operators use a 3rd party company to check the data. Take a look here: http://www.ausdig.com/

Although that isn't the primary aim its perfectly possible to carry out that analysis within our system, once its off the aircraft. We can even retrieve data whilst an aircraft is in flight for analysis. The analytical possibilities are really eye opening and the whole aviation industry (and beyond) are looking to use data to improve safety, cut failures and costs.

Check out the G650, that has the evs system and a whole lot more as well.

[Sifly]

Yes, the 'spy in the cab' has made airline flying fairly boring, we have to operate the aircraft within set perameters and conform with certain 'gates' at various stages of flight. Gone are the days when the thrust stayed at idle from top of descent until 200ft above the runway, and screeming downwind in the circuit at 1500ft doing 330kts!

But fair enough, it's in the interest of safety and thats the No.1 priority.
It's still good fun to 'stick and rudder' a big boeing around a visual approach to some tiny greek island with just 7000ft of runway to play with!

[simonej]

That FILDRA/FOQA stuff sounds scary and I sincerely hope it's not on any of our aircraft! I only found out the other day that the one I'm flying at the moment fires off an email to ops when the wheels go up and then when they come down - God knows what else it's telling them!

[Crafty_]

simonej said:

That FILDRA/FOQA stuff sounds scary and I sincerely hope it's not on any of our aircraft! I only found out the other day that the one I'm flying at the moment fires off an email to ops when the wheels go up and then when they come down - God knows what else it's telling them!

Just don't fart in the pilots seat, boss wont be happy